The seminars listed below
can be given upon request.
Professional
Development Workshops and Seminars
Workshop: Research
skills for graduate graduate students, postdocs, and other
junior researchers
Research is an activity
that must be learned. In this workshop we cover skills needed
to be effective in a research career. These skills include the
following:
How to choose a research
topic and an adviser
Using questions to drive
research
Goals setting
Challenges and opportunities
in the practice of science
Research ethics
Using the scientific
literature
Oral and written
communication
Publishing papers
Time management
Writing proposals
The scientific career
Applying for a job
In this interactive
workshops we choose from the topics above based on the
interest of the audience. I teach this material in
different forms; as a semester-long course, as a short course
of a few afternoons, or as a single one-hour seminar.
The book The
Art of Being a Scientist, that covers most of this
material is available from Cambridge University Press.
Title: Professional
development education for graduate students and other young
academics
The
current model for training researchers is very much like the
medieval system where an apprentice follows a master for
years of training. This model gives graduate students
valuable hands-on experience. What often lacks in this
educational model is an explicit transfer of skills and
information at a rate and moment in time that is effective
for acquiring research skills in a timely manner. This
contains practical skills for doing research (e.g.,
choosing a research topic, what to do when being stuck, oral
and written communication) as well as skills that are needed
for a successful professional career (such as negotiation,
teamwork, time management, ethics). This material can be
delivered through a combination of courses and workshops. In
this seminar I present examples of the delivery of material
and share best practices for delivering professional
development education.
Title: Professional
development education of science and engineering students
Much of the education of
scientists and engineers focuses on disciplinary skills. These
skills are essential, but there are many reasons why these
disciplinary skills needs to be complemented with a broader
skill set. In almost any type of work that scientists or
engineers do, written and oral communication is essential.
Since science and engineering are not value-free, it is
important that students develop a moral compass that guides
them in their career. (In fact, the National Science
Foundation mandates ethics training for students that are
supported by the NSF.) Lastly, the state of mental health of
students gives reasons for concern, and it is important that
we offer students adequate tools for self-management and
wellbeing. I will present the approach taken at the Colorado
School of Mines for expanding the education of scientists and
engineers beyond disciplinary skills, and the opportunities
and impediments encountered in developing and implementing
this broadening of the education offered.
Title: Living the life of
the modern researcher
We live in an age where
working in science or engineering offers tremendous
professional opportunities--the pace and progress of
scientific development is truly breathtaking. Yet many
researchers in the sciences, social sciences, and engineering
struggle with the pressures of the fast-paced academic
workplace, and struggle to harmonize their work lives with
their personal lives. In this conversational and interactive
seminar we will examine some of the attitudes, beliefs, and
habits that influence the way we give shape to our career and
that may affect our wellbeing.
Workshop for graduate
students: Working with your Adviser
In this workshop for graduate
students we cover the opportunities and pitfalls in working
with your advisor. There is no such thing as the "generic
advisor." Different advisors have different styles, and
different students have different needs. We cover the
different supervision styles and how these might serve the
needs of different students. A positive work relation
between graduate students and their advisors is essential,
and it is important that expectations between student and
advisor are matched. We will discuss these
expectations--what is reasonable and what is not--and
provide a tool that helps streamline the collaboration
between student and advisor. Lastly we will cover options a
student has when the collaboration with an advisor does not
go well.
Workshop: Effective
Negotiation Skills
Negotiation is an integral
part of professional life. Negotiating a job contract is one
of the first things we do (hopefully) when leaving school.
While in graduate school, or on the job, numerous occasions
arise where we need to negotiate, and it is important that
we can stand up for our interest by effective negotiation.
Yet many of us are not comfortable negotiating, or don't
know how to negotiate. In this workshop we explore
internal barriers we may face to enter a negotiation. We
will cover the basics of negotiation, which involve knowing
what you want or need, and conversation methods that
encourage the other party to move towards your needs while
maintaining a positive dialogue. Lastly we discuss simple
practices that help you become more comfortable with
negotiation.
Workshop:
Time Management
Do you wish there
was a 25th hour in the day, or an 8th day in the week?
Many of us are so busy that we have a strong sense of
not being able to get things "done." In this workshop we
cover steps that may alleviate the pressure we feel of
there not being enough time. We cover a tool to analyze
how to prioritize our time and make wise choices, we
discuss why many many of us then to take on too much,
and why we may find it difficult to say "no" to new
activities. We also discuss a number of tangible steps
that help manage our activities while us more productive
in our work.
Workshop: Driving research by
creatively asking questions
Abstract: Questions are the prime
driver of research because they are invitations to
answers. Knowing the main questions to be addressed for a
research project is usually not enough because the main
question often is too broad to lead to specific actions.
In this seminar we discuss the importance of questions in
research, different ways to generate research questions,
and ways to order questions so that they naturally lead to
a workplan for research.
Workshop: How to (Not) Give a
Truly Terrible Talk
Did you ever listen to a
presentation that was poorly delivered, where you felt you
were wasting your time? It happens, and when it does, you
don't want to be the speaker doing the delivery. In this
workshop we will compare the same talk when presented in two
different ways and use this comparison to get clarity on the
do's and dont's of oral presentations. After attending this
workshop you know the importance of telling--and
repeating--a story, the basics of effective use and design
of slides, and how to use your voice and body for a
compelling delivery.
Workshop: Teamwork and How to
Combine our Talents
Good teamwork is more than just
combining forces so we can get more work done. Good teams
consist of members with diverse skills and characters, and
their members know how to exploit this diversity by turning
it into a strength instead of a weakness. Doing so requires
an intentional effort because differences in team members
can lead to disfunction when not handled properly. In
addition, intelligent people of good will often do stupid
things when working in a group (the stupidity paradox). In
this workshops we discuss opportunities and challenges
in teamwork, and give participants insights in their
strength and weaknesses while working on a team.
Workshop: Conflict resolution
Despite our best intentions conflicts do occur. In fact,
conflicts sometimes arise and grow because our reluctance or
inability to have a "difficult" conversation at an early
stage before it festers and then erupts into a conflict. In
practice, conflicts develop according to a repeatable and
predictable pattern. In this workshop we discuss this
pattern using a conflict between a graduate student and
advisor as an example. Perhaps more importantly, we discuss
how during every step of the escalation the conflict might
have been de-escalated, when the help of others is needed,
and what form that help might take.
Title: Value-Based
Ethics and the Moral Compass; from Preaching and Teaching to
Reaching
Professional
ethics education in science and engineering is often based
either on telling students what proper ethical principles
are (e.g., professional codes of ethics) and/or by teaching
the philosophical theories of ethics. Although there is a
value and purpose for both types of teaching ethics, these
approaches alone are not effective to bring about ethical
engagement and behavioral change unless the materials are
embraced and internalized by students. Instead, we propose
that effective ethics teaching includes connecting to the
personal values of students. But often we are not aware what
our values really are; we need to reach out to them. We will
explore the concept of values, and do an exercise to help us
get clarity on what our values are. We will then explore how
these values might shape the daily professional practice of
scientists or engineers.
Title: Ten ethical questions
for scientists and engineers
Science and
engineering in the broadest sense not only help us better
understand the world in which we live; these fields also
increase the power that we hold over the world.
Unfortunately, neither science nor engineering comes with a
recipe how to use that power. This idea is captured by the
writer Goswani* who states that "Creativity unguided is a
two-edged sword. It can be used to enhance the ego at the
expense of civilization. One must apply creativity with
wisdom." Helping students grow the wisdom how to use science
and engineering responsibly is one of the goals of teaching
ethics. In addition, students benefit from learning how to
make ethical decisions in the daily practice of science.
Ethics training is now mandated by the National Science
Foundation for all students and postdocs that are supported
by this organization. In response to this requirement, the
Colorado School of Mines has developed the graduate course
"Introduction to Research Ethics" (SYGN502).
* Goswani, A.,
The self-aware universe, Penguin Putnam Inc., New York,
1995.
Title: Diversity in the
research environment
The modern research
environment is increasingly diverse. This is partly due to
increased globalization, but within the United States and
Europe this is also due to a change in the demographics.
This increased diversity poses challenges and opportunities
for optimally collaborating and communicating. The
increasing international diversity of research groups is,
unfortunately, not accompanied by an increased participation
of US minorities in research. I present some of the
roadblocks that hamper an increased diversity in research
that include lack of knowledge or appreciation of other
cultures, deeply ingrained prejudices, fear, social
inequality, and perhaps most importantly, an inability to
see and appreciate our common humanity. Identifying these
impediments may help remove or overcome them, so that we can
take advantage of the cultural and intellectual enrichment
of a diverse research environment.
Title: Teaching the class "Science and Spirituality" to
college students
At many universities,
conversations about spirituality are relegated to the
personal realm. Yet, there is a deep need among some
students to have conversations about spirituality in the
environment where these students also learn disciplinary
skills. This has led to the development of the undergraduate
class "Science and Spirituality" at the Colorado School of
Mines. This class is a mix of historical, scientific, and
spiritual perspectives and includes experiential exercises.
Instead of striking an intellectual or academic tone, the
class is aimed at providing a rich personal experience.
Students appreciate the opportunity to dive into the subject
with fellow students. The topic has the potential to lead to
controversial encounters, therefore setting the right
tone--based on dialogue and respect--as well as building
trust in the class, is an essential part of teaching this
topic. In this seminar I will present the scope of the
class, my experience of teaching this class, a set of best
practices, and an example of class activities.
Technical Seminars
Title: Variations and healing
of the seismic velocity
Interferometric methods in
seismology have made it possible to detect time-lapse
changes in the seismic velocity with an accuracy of about
0.1%. I will show examples of detecting velocity changes in
the laboratory, the earth's near surface, and in engineered
structures. Perhaps surprisingly, the seismic velocity is
not constant at all, and varies with the seasons,
temperature, precipitation, as the weather does. In
addition, the seismic velocity usually drops as a result of
deformation. Most of these changes likely occur in the near
surface or the region of deformation, and a drawback of
using strongly scattered waves is that it is difficult to
localize the spatial area of the velocity change. I will
present laboratory measurements that show that a certain
spatial localization of the velocity change can be achieved.
One of the intriguing observations is that after deformation
the seismic velocity recovers logarithmically with time.The reason for
this particular time-dependence is the presence of healing
mechanisms that operate at different time scales. Since this
is feature of many physical systems, the logarithmic healing
is a widespread behavior and is akin in its generality to
the Gutenberg-Richter law.
Title: Focusing waves in
unknown media
In
many applications, such as imaging, one needs to focus
wavefields. In general one needs to know
the medium to focus waves, and limitations
on the properties of the medium can hamper adequate
focusing. In this presentation I show a method to focus
waves in an unknown medium. The method is based on inverse
scattering methods as originally developed in quantum
mechanics. I show, using simple examples, that the so-called
Marchenko equation provides the Green's functions that
accounts for the wave propagation from the acquisition
surface to any arbitrary point in the medium. These Green's
functions account for the wave propagation in the unknown
medium and can directly be used to focus or image waves.
Tutorial: seismic
interferometry, who needs a seismic source?
Seismic interferometry is
a technique for imaging without coherent sources. The idea is
to combine waveforms, generated by ambient noise, that are
recorded at different receivers in a way to provide the waves
that would propagate between these receivers as if there was a
source at one of these receivers. This obviates the need to
have a soure located at one of the receivers. In the tutorial
I cover different formulations of the theory that explain
seismic interferometry, and present examples with field data
that show the possibilities that are opened up with this new
technique. With the advent of permanent networks of
seismometers in exploration seismology and global seismology,
seismic interferometry opens up new methods for imaging and
time-lapse monitoring.
Title:
Extraction of the Green's function from ambient fluctuations
for general linear systems
The extraction of the
Green's function of acoustic and elastic waves from ambient
fluctuations is by now a technique that is theoretical
well-described and that has succesfully been used in different
applications. I show theoretically that the principle of the
extraction of the Green's function can be generalized to a
wide class of linear systems. These new applications
include the diffusion equation, Maxwell's equations, a
vibrating beam, and the Schroedinger equation. For
systems that are invariant for time-reversal it suffices to
have sources of ambient fluctuations on a surface that bounds
the region of interest. When the invariance for
time-reversal is broken, as for example in the case of
the diffusion equation or for wave propagation in attenuating
media, one also needs sources of ambient fluctuations throught
the volume. This work opens up new opportunities to
extract the Green's function from ambient fluctuations that
include electromagnetic fields in conducting media, flow in
porous media, wave propagation in attenuating media,
monitoring of mechanical structures, and quantum mechanics.
Title: Extracting the
building response from incoherent waves
Structures such as
buildings or bridges are often instrumented with
accelerometers to monitor the vibrations. Since the excitation
of these structures usually is incoherent, these recordings do
not directly give the impulse response (the response to an
impulsive loading) of these structures. I show how seismic
interferometry can be used to extract the impulse response
from a building from incoherent vibrations recorded in a
building after an earthquake. I also show that depending on
the data-processing that is applied, either the propagating
waves or the normal modes of the buliding can be retrieved.
With this apprach the response of the building can be
separated from the coupling of the building to the subsurface.
In this seminar I show the theory and apply this to the motion
recorded in the Millikan Libary in Pasadena (California).
Title: Coda Wave
Interferometry
Multiple scattered waves
are not very useful for deterministic imaging in complicated
media because there is no known algorithm to construct such an
image. Because multiple scattered waves have long wave-paths,
these waves are very sensitive to small changes in the medium.
Coda wave interferometry is a new technique that can be used
to detect minute changes in a strongly scattering medium using
changes in the multiple scattered waves over time. This
technique is analogous to speckle pattern interferometry as
used in optics, but takes advantage of the phase information
in recorded waves. Because of its modest hardware
requirements, coda wave interometry has a large number of
applications. These include geotechnical applications
(dam-monitoring, tunnel monitoring), the evaluation of hazards
(volcano and fault monitoring), non-destructive testing,
locating earthquakes, and monitoring of hydrocarbon
reservoirs.
Title: Time-reversed
imaging as a diagnostic of wave and particle chaos
Chaotic behaviour of
particles concerns the stability properties of trajectories
under perturbations of initial conditions. For waves, chaotic
behaviour is less clearly defined. Both Newton's law and the
Helmholtz equation are symmetric under time-reversal. This
means that particles or waves emitted by a source at t=0
should refocus on the source when their propagation is
reversed in time. Chaotic behaviour will prevent this to
occur. This idea is tested for a system of very strong
scatterers through which particles and wave propagate.
Analytical expressions are derived for the critical
perturbations of the initial conditions of both waves and
particles. It is shown that the resulting behaviour of waves
and particles are fundamentally different with critical length
scales ranging over 15 orders of magnitude. The analytical
results are illustrated and confirmed by numerical
simulations.
Talks for a
General Audience
Title: Hydraulic fracturing, a tale of two continents
Hydraulic fracturing has recently revolutionized oil and gas
production. The public concerns about this technique are
significant, to an extent that limits the use of hydraulic
fracturing in many regions. In this presentation I discuss these
concerns and show that the societal response to hydraulic
fracturing in North America and Europe is very different. But
one can argue that on both continents the democratic
decision-making process is broken down, albeit for different
reasons. The result of this breakdown is that we are not asking
ourselves the tough questions that we ought to ask ourselves.
This is a presentation is for the non-specialist.
Title: Facing the main challenges in Carbon Capture and
Sequestration
Capturing CO2 and injecting it in the subsurface is often
seen as the main tool to prevent man-made global warming. The
following questions must be answered before this process can be
used on a scale that actually makes a difference in preventing
climate change. (1) How can the cost of this process be reduced
from its projected cost of 150 billion dollars per year? (2) How
can this the capture and injection be up-scaled with a factor
1000 beyond current capabilities? (3) How can we predict and
monitor leakage? Many action alternative to carbon capture and
sequestration likely to be much cheaper and save energy as well.
Biographical sketch
Roel Snieder holds the W.M. Keck Distinguished
Chair of Professional Development Education at the Colorado
School of Mines. He received in 1984 a Masters degree in
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics from Princeton University, and in
1987 a Ph.D. in seismology from Utrecht University. In 1993 he
was appointed as professor of seismology at Utrecht
University, where from 1997-2000 he served as Dean of the
Faculty of Earth Sciences. Roel served on the editorial
boards of Geophysical Journal International, Inverse Problems,
Reviews of Geophysics, the Journal of the Acoustical Society
of America, and the European Journal of Physics. In 2000 he
was elected as Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He isauthor of the textbooks "A Guided Tour of Mathematical Methods
for the Physical Sciences", "The
Art of Being a Scientist", and "The
Joy of Science" that are published by Cambridge
University Press. In 2011 he was elected as Honorary Member of
the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and in 2014 he
received a research award from the Alexander von Humboldt
Foundation. In 2016 Roel received the Beno Gutenberg Medal
from the European Geophysical Union and the Outstanding
Educator Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.
From 2000-2014 he was a firefighter in Genesee Fire Rescue
where he served for two years as Fire Chief.